With their pots stacked high and boat decks washed, commercial crab fishermen along the Central Coast are prepped for a season that is expected to start next Wednesday, on-time for the first time since 2014. And the getting could be good.

“Ocean conditions over the past couple years, as the crabs that we’ll catch this year have matured, have been pretty good,” says Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in San Francisco. “It was good enough that we think the resources will be very healthy.”

But while optimism undergirds the attitude for this year’s catch, there’s still a lingering feeling of uneasiness in members of the industry because of the repercussions from the last two seasons.

“Brutal,” “devastating,” “a disaster,” are all ways fishermen and heads of the industry have described the crab seasons of 2015 and 2016, when concentrations of domoic acid in the guts of crabs exceeded safe consumption levels determined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The toxin, which can cause vomiting, dizziness, seizures, and even death, kept crab fishermen harbored at port for much of 2016 and almost the entire season of 2015.

Oppenheim says the repercussions of those years have not dissipated since, especially among small commercial fishing boats, which cannot travel to fishing grounds outside of their home port, and young up-and-coming fishermen, who did not have the finances to break even.

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“If you’re a young guy just getting started, you’re going to have a real tough time of it,” Oppenheim says, which could be devastating for the entire industry. ““We lose opportunity, we lose individual fishermen, we lose talent, and we could even lose the next generation, who sometimes choose not to enter the fishery because the prospects do not look good.”

Oppenheim looks not only to this coming season to assist the industry, but help from Congress, which he expects to offer financial assistance after Gov. Jerry Brown declared the state of the crab industry a “Fishery Disaster” in February.

“These disaster funds aren’t just going into the wallets of commercial fishermen,” he says. “They’d be used to pay for infrastructure and repairs that are sorely needed” in an industry that now makes up the “bread and butter” of small coastal ports, especially since the salmon fishery has declined. But Congress has yet to respond to the request.

Bret Shaw, a resident fisherman from Santa Cruz who has fished crabs for the past 12 years, takes a slightly different stand. He feels that the crab industry was “hosed” by casting fear into the public about domoic acid, upending years of positive relation that the industry cultivated.

“Domoic acid has been in shellfish for as long as I can remember,” he says, but people will be scared to consume the crabs even if this year is good. “There are only so many people that are like, ‘Oh, it’s fine. That’s all gone now. We’ll eat crab.’ But a lot of people are still scared of even touching it. It’s going to take people a long, long time to get over domoic acid.”

“Really there shouldn’t be any concerns about eating crab this year just because last year was bad,” says John Haynes, the interim harbor master at Monterey harbor. He hasn’t heard any concerns from recreational fishermen returning from sea since their season opened this past weekend.

“It’s not like mercury or a heavy metal that stays in the food chain,” he says. “It’s a very temporal thing that exists when conditions are ripe for red algae” to grow.

Last tests for domoic acid on Sept. 23 in Monterey Bay showed average levels that were one-sixth of level considered toxic, according to the California Department of Health, a good start for the season.

Haynes still feels uncertain of the season, though, as recreational fishermen aren’t yet bringing in the bounty expected. “It’s not a dynamite gangbuster start, but it’s not a poor one either,” he says. “I think this year’s still kind of up in the air.”